North Shore City Council saved $291,440 in the first nine months of using FoundationFootprint™.
Cost Savings - FoundationFootprint™ gives unprecedented visibility of current and historic utility invoices in the form of graphical and textual business intelligence. By combining this with automated tariff checking and reporting of “spikes” and “troughs” in invoicing, significant refunds can be realised through
- the highlighting of invoicing errors,
- corrections on previously unchallenged accounts and tariffs,
- challenging unusual usage levels and
- concentrating on reducing resource usage beginning with the highest users first.
Time Savings - With the Universal Bill Manager, considerable time savings are realised through
- the automatic checking of invoices for correct pricing and unusual usage levels,
- providing an electronic approvals process,
- automated historic audit trails,
- notes entered by staff
- and integrating with the customers financial systems.
Raising Awareness Through Better Information - FoundationFootprint™ puts quality information into the hands of staff that are familiar with the sites and meter locations. By providing the ability to give feedback and challenge line items on invoices each month, staff can identify unusual usage levels as well as inactive sites that are still being invoiced by the supplier.
Tracking Cleantech and Greentech Investments - The Return on Investment (ROI) Project Manager allows customers to conclusively track the return on investment of a clean tech or energy efficiency projects such as LED street lighting for a city council or fuel efficiency technologies in an organisations fleet.
The Numbers
North Shore City Council began using FoundationFootprint™ in September 2008 beginning with 3 years of historic energy information.
| Refunds from errors in invoices |
$221,166 |
| Refunds from identifying inactive sites, some for as long as 4 years ago |
$16,624 |
| Potential savings from identifying unusually high usage levels at Takapuna Aquatic Centre (see appendix) assuming this would have continued to be missed for another 4 months |
$28,000 |
| Savings from reduced time to check, approve and manage hundreds of invoices (Estimates from North Shore City Council situation), 75 hours a month since September 2008 – 675 hours x $38 per hour |
$25,650 |
| Total savings from electricity accounts in first 9 months of using FoundationFootprint™ |
$291,440 |
What North Shore City Council has to say
“FoundationFootprint™ is an excellent product. At the click of a button I can see the energy usage and carbon footprint of any single set of traffic lights, bus station, library or even a whole business unit. And I have information for as far back as we have data for, more than three years in some cases. We currently track energy, gas, fuel and some of our suppliers’ emissions and are in the process of putting in our water and waste.
“And the Universal Bill Manager has dramatically simplified our process of approving hundreds of utility bills every month and has in itself provided the return on our investment in FoundationFootprint™. It's highlighting any invoice discrepancies from our suppliers and allows us to compare each month’s usage with as much historic data as we have. With the graphs and tables of data we can gauge the trends of each of our 450 sites and take action to reduce resource usage starting with the heaviest users first.
We have all kinds of business intelligence and reports that are automatically generated on demand and the FoundationFootprint™ team are adding new features and reports every month. And their support team are really helpful and responsive and always ask us for our feedback.
We're really happy we chose FoundationFootprint™.”
Michael Field
Sustainability Manager
Corporate Sustainability, Procurement and Fleet Management Group
North Shore City Council